Waw Stories (2025)

01/08/2025

Eid 2925 - Alhamdulilah

How was your Eid this year?

A belated Eid Mubarak for all our followers! There were many Eid activities from our end this year, enjoy the short photo dump 📸

Highlights:

🎉 Helping to raise money and donate 💷💰💷 to the local masjid through a books and stationary stall at an Eid fair - Alhamdulilah! 🎊🕌❤️

🎉 Supporting an Eid party at a primary school this year where we contributed books, decorations and free food for a buffet - yum😋!! It was for a whole-school Eid party for ALL kids to enjoy 🥳. The children absolutely loved the free Eid food, games, music, crafts and cultural items on display! 📚🌙🎊

🎉 Super duper pleased that a donation of our books managed to reach recipients in time for Eid as part of gift packages arranged by . Thank you to all who made this Eid Gift idea happen, what an honour to take part and Alhamdulilah for the opportunity to donate! 💝🎁💐

Don’t forget people in your local communities who need support ❤️

🎶“Let’s give more, that’s what Eid is for”🎵🎤great lyrics from Muad!

We pray all acts of sadaqah were accepted including yours too, InshaAllah ameen 🤲

11/07/2024

Jamal made it to Bosnia!!👌💕🌳

Alhamdulilah the trio is complete! Now that’s all three of our children’s picture books snapped in the respective geographical places where their stories are set!! 🙌

How beautiful is Bosnia and the Balkans where the world of Jamal the Giant and “the wonderful woods” is set?

Bosnia is a beautiful country, chosen for this story as it is the setting of a real life terrible trauma that took place. This beautiful country has overcome a very ugly past in recent years.

On the eve which signals in memories of the Bosnian genocide, where the world will mark the darkest depths of human depravity during ‘war’ and conflict, we wanted to share our story book and a small ray of hope for a new generation.

Our story is about overcoming a ‘giant’ conflict, peace-building and conflict resolution for children. Our story is about restorative justice, where reconciliation takes place with the community at large.

Through our book we remind children of the power of good deeds along with hope and faith, and that the focus on these must be greater than any fear and shame.

We wish Bosnia, it’s people and it’s neighbours, justice, peace, healing and the power to overcome trauma through new hope and love 💕🕊️InshaAllah.

Stay hopeful 🤲✨

23/06/2024

The stage is set …⛵️🐪📜🕌🎭

for a story adventure!

Delighted to share some pictures of the wonderful storytelling stage recently put on by 🎭

Back in 2023 founder Mariam was asked by a primary school to suggest enrichment activities that support the new non-Western history module on the ‘Early Islamic Civilisation’.

This history module generally covers the city of Baghdad in 800AD and the glorious ‘Bayt Al Hikmah’, the House of Wisdom*, which gave birth to many modern scientific discoveries and inventions through the early Islamic civilisation. 🔭🧪⚗️

Well who better to work with on such a project than the award-winning Khayaal theatre! 🙌

Children were treated to an exciting performance by storytelling artist Eleanor aka Asiya, who enthralled everyone with a travelling tale journeying from the ‘Dark ages’ England to cities in the ‘Golden age’ (Toledo in Spain and Baghdad in Iraq).🕌

The people in this empire were inspired by their faith to pioneer new ways forward in the sciences, they were also inspired by Greek philosophers 🏛️🏺and ideas that travelled from China 🏯🧧⛩️and South Asia 🛕🪷.

They took the best of everything and developed it further for the greater good of humanity. It’s worth noting the societies under the early Islamic leadership were multi-faith also. Many Christian and Jewish great thinkers thrived in these societies.

covered all of this and more! It was fantastic to see this interactive session unfold and hear the countless questions from children and to see so much inquiry from young minds 😍

We hope the learning stays with the children for a lifetime, InshaAllah!

If you would like to know more about this period of time and the National Curriculum DM for further details 📩📨

*The Bayt Al-Hikmah (aka the Grand Library of Baghdad) was one of the leading libraries in Islamic history that appeared during the ‘Golden age’ of Islam. It was initiated by the Abbasid dynasty and was situated in the heart of Baghdad aka the ‘Round city’.

21/06/2024

Sneak peek! 👀

We value stories from Muslim and Middle Eastern cultures. ❤️

Part of valuing these stories is knowing we cannot deliver everything ourselves as a small indy children’s book publisher.

Instead we need to assist with initiatives and solutions that partner up with and/or sign post to other excellent service providers. 🤝

Very excited to share news of a recent solution we found for a local primary school in need of enrichment activities that suit the National Curriculum!🏫🚸🎓📝

We hope it can inspire others and lead to more good work in this area: challenging bias, spreading knowledge, bridge building, and increasing interfaith understanding.❤️✨

Stay tuned for part 2 with more info.

20/06/2024

Just a girl reading in her local 🕌📚❤️

Thought we’d share this uplifting set of pictures😍

Always wonderful to see a child enjoying our children’s book, this time within a Masjid and on the other side of the world in Canada 🇨🇦!

Happy reading 🌈📖✨

18/06/2024

Eid Mubarak folks! ✨🌙🌍🌏🌎

We hope your cups were full, your plates were filled and your tables had joy around them with good company 👍❤️🎊

Taqabbalallahu Minna Wa Minkum ( تَقَبَّلَ اللهُ مِنَّا وَمِنكُم)

May Allah accept your good deeds; your sacrifice, any fasting, sadaqah and acts of ibadah during the blessed ten days of Dhul Hijjah, Ameen. 🤲✨

13/06/2024

Front cover development! 📘📖📚

Sharing some more images of original concept art and development for An Ocean in One Drop - how things have changed! 🎨🖌️

If you look closely you will see that some drafts were refined through computer processes.🖥️⌨️

We never wanted to lose sight of the fact that this was a Hajj related book, and would be relevant every year during the Dhull Hijjah period. 🕋✨

As you can see an early front cover sketch idea had the Kaaba 🕋 inside a Zamzam💧water drop. However, the favoured concept was one with the outline of a female figure blending into ocean water 🌊, alluding to mother Hajar (as), the woman at the heart of our Hajj, which this book celebrates.

One of the main drivers for this story book was that mother Hajar (as) has often been erased from the current storytelling behind the Zamzam water and origins of Makkah.

It’s such a shame that the central figure to the story would be removed from the storytelling itself, but this had been seen time and again across many different mediums and it was time to create change through a children’s story book.

Imagine telling the story behind the Zamzam well and removing the very woman who was the owner of the well! ‘Such is life’ … or patriarchy / misogyny to be more precise…

So it made sense to place a female outline on the front cover - to visually centre what is essentially a woman’s story at the very heart of Islam.

BUT - we don’t know what she looked like other than that she was a woman and a mother … so this is just an artistic representation mainly for educational purposes.

We tried to be as respectful as possible in the context of educating children and helping them to understand the gravity of mother Hajar’s (as) story within the sacred Sa’ee, so no faces have been shown (acceptable to most).

May Allah accept it from us, and for it to be a means of knowledge and blessings for many generations to come InshaAllah, ameen 🤲

29/05/2024

‘When art imitates life’ … It’s the Springs 5 neighbourhood! ☀️🏘️🏡🌴

This community was one of the main sources of inspiration for our Ramadan Drummer book. 🥁🌙✨

As you may know our story book focuses on the UAE cultural version of the popular Ramadan Drummer Suhoor tradition. ☪️

The Ramadan Drummer is known as the ‘Musaharati’ in many Arab countries including in the UAE and he was also affectionately called ‘Abu Tabla’ locally in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Unfortunately the tradition died out in these areas as they raced towards modernisation. Our book explores what would happen if it restarted again in a modern Dubai neighbourhood! 😅🥁🙌

Here’s a throwback to yet another full circle moment last year when author Mariam revisited the streets of Springs 5 in Dubai, the neighbourhood that was the place of inspiration for the world building behind this book and the place where the book was written.

During production we tried to capture the modern, yet classic, Gulf Arab neighbourhood and street style that was in keeping with the real life environment of the Springs locality.

We also tried to capture the multicultural local community in our book.

Can you spot any similarities?

22/04/2024

🌙✨Happy Eid!!🌙✨

Do you like our Eid school assembly display?

It was for yet another school talk, yay!🌙🏫 🚸✨

Last week Founder Mariam presented primary school assemblies about Eid (with fellow parent Salima ❤️) to around 480 school children.

It was lovely to see the children’s faces light up with smiles! 😍

The talk was interactive and the kids were treated to a display of lovely Eid books, Eid decor and a visual presentation of Eid celebrations around the world, as well as nationally and locally.

Mariam spoke about the 5 pillars of Islam, why Muslims break their fast with water, milk and dates, the meaning of Eid Al Fitr and the Sunnah acts to be performed on Eid day by adult Muslims. 📿🛐🕌

The significance of giving money to charity *before* the Eid salah (Fitrana) was reinforced.🪙💷🎗️

The children had fun learning about how Eid was celebrated by some school mates - we spoke about the ‘Light Upon Light’ Eid fun day and also the events - both Eid events were attended by thousands.

We’re hope this will benefit the hundreds of children who attended the assemblies by forming good memories of Eid and seeing Muslim identity positively represented within a mainstream school environment in a joyous and authentic way! 🎊🕌🎁🌙

Joy is so important! 🎉🥳

Thanks to Salima for partnering up on these presentations 💕.

InshaAllah hoping to do more assemblies - please get in touch if you need your local school to do a Ramadan, Eid or Islam related assembly / in-class session as an enrichment activity to support children’s learning.📚🏫🚸👩‍🏫

19/04/2024

Eid Mubarak all🌙✨

تَقَبَّلَ اللّهُ مِنَّ وَ مِنْكُمْ

TaqabbalAllahu minna wa minkum, May Allah accept it from you and from us, Ameen 🤲✨

Here’s an Eid photo dump from ours to yours of simple joys during Eid💕🕌

We had a brief stall at the local masjid raising money for Islamic causes, bringing cheer to the children at Eid salah 📿🛐

Other photos are: Eid greeting cards, Eid fun day via (Light Upon Light events) with Eid flags kindly provided by .co.uk , a delicious chocolate ‘Eid cake’🎂 and the Eid fair.

Hope you had a wonderful Eid, it’s been a difficult few months, we are hurting from cruelties we’ve had to witness and we keep those who are going through conflict, oppression and poverty in our hearts, thoughts and acts of sadaqah.

We hope you gave your Fitrana on time before the Eid salah! ❤️💕❤️

17/04/2024

Thank you for sharing your Ramadan posts with us this year!! 🌙🕌✨

We love seeing your and posts featuring our books.

Please remember to do a good deed and help us gain back some visibility online by rating our books or leaving a short review online - mainly on and or any retailer website you may have used.

We have certainly had a rough time this year with ensuring our book is not wiped off the map in terms of online search engine results, so your efforts will be a big help! 🙏

Even just one sentence and a quick rating, which could take just 1 minute of your time, will make all the difference in ensuring our books become more visible online iA … 📚👍

Jazakallah khairun for your assistance, is ever grateful. ❤️✨

And thank you to for sharing your beautiful Ramadan set up this year 😍🌙✨

10/03/2024

Missing mothers

The tragic truth: Why do so many popular fairy tales, stories and children’s books have ‘missing mothers’?📚

The mothers are absent, or dead. “Barely visible” in children’s stories as one commentator put it.

Is a ‘missing mother’ a prerequisite for a good story?

So many of the original fairy tales from Europe that became famous in our modern day culture have mothers ‘missing’ from the start. Is this necessary to captivate audiences?

Many famous Eastern (and non-Western European) stories don’t feature ‘missing mothers’ as much.

For example, although Disney’s Aladdin features ‘missing mothers’ for the characters Aladdin and Princess Jasmin, this was not the case in the original Eastern* story. Aladdin’s mother was very involved! Disney made the mothers go ‘missing’ to fit their own template.

Why?

When we look at popular stories and their origins, it tells us a lot about the cultures they come from and the psychology of the people who have kept them alive.

It’s been said Mothers are “rarely the heroes or protagonists in [English] children’s fiction”**. So what does this tell us about their value and perceived agency?

Thankfully we have tried to shake things up with our books.

(⬅️ Swipe to see) Our stories don’t have the ‘missing mothers’ archetype, we have been conscious not to make them passive or a distant memory …. whilst keeping the stories captivating and entertaining!!

Change is possible. Even in our life time.👏

This we hope representation of mothers in children’s books can change. 📖👍 💐

Special Note:
This post is dedicated to all the children in G 4 z@ and beyond who have had their mothers cruelly stolen from them. A ‘missing mother’ is their lived reality, which conflict and military invasion wrote into their story.

May the ppl of the world find empathy for your stories, the way they are fascinated with mainstream stories of orphans.

Praying for peace to come your way swiftly inshaAllah, Ameen 🥹💔🕊️

* From Elf laila wa laila, “A thousand nights & one night”
** Michaela Mahlberg & Anna Cermakova

Waw Stories

01/08/2025

11/07/2024

23/06/2024

21/06/2024

20/06/2024

18/06/2024

13/06/2024

29/05/2024

22/04/2024

19/04/2024

17/04/2024

10/03/2024

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